"Luern" takes its name from Louernios (sometimes spelled Luernios), legendary king of the Arverni people in the 2nd century BCE, father of Bituitus. His name is said to mean "the fox" in Gaulish.
The Greek historian Posidonius, whose account survives through Athenaeus in his Deipnosophistae, tells how Louernios sought to win his people's favor through extraordinary generosity: he rode across his lands in a chariot, scattering gold and silver among the crowd of Celts who followed him. He also had a vast square enclosure built, twelve stadia to a side, where he set up presses filled with precious liquors and had such a quantity of food prepared that, for several days, anyone who wished could come and help themselves freely.
It is even said that a poet, arriving too late for one of these feasts, composed a song lamenting his own delay. Touched, Louernios tossed him a purse of gold from his chariot — and the poet immediately struck up a new song, proclaiming that even Louernios's footprints on the ground spread goodness around him.
It is this idea of a wealth that only makes sense when shared, told, and passed on that gave Luern its name: a library made to be filled, then shown to others.
Among the Celtic peoples, Greek and Roman authors (Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Posidonius) distinguished three classes of sages: the druids, guardians of justice, religion and moral philosophy; the bards, poets and singers, keepers of oral memory; and the vates — in Gaulish, ouateis — seers and interpreters of signs, students of nature, credited with inspired speech. The word survives today in the Irish fáith ("prophet, seer") and the Welsh ofydd.
It is to this figure of the vate — one who reads signs, interprets, advises and inspires — that Luern owes the name of its assistant: Vate reads your library, spots patterns in it, and whispers what to read next.